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COPVRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 




Pres. M. Woolsey Stryker, D.D., LL.D. 



^be ipresbi^terian pulpit 

» 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 

BY THE 

REV. M. WOOLSEY STRYKER, D. D., LL. D. 

President Hamilton College 



PHILADELPHIA 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 
AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK 

1903 



THE BRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

MAR 12 1903 

Copyright Entry 
CLASS CL^ XXc. No. 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1902, by the Trustees of 
The Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath- 
School Work. 



Puhlished January , ig03. 





CONTENTS 




I. 


The Well by the Gate . 


PAGE 

• 3 


II. 


The Carpenter's Son 


• 13 


III. 


The Tower of Siloam 


. 25 


IV. 


John's Three Definitions of God. 


• 43 


V. 


Conviction, or Hearsay . 


• 59 


VI. 


The Unknown God .... 


. 73 


VII. 


The Sanctions of Law . 


. 89 


VIII. 


The Invisible Companion 


. 105 



I 

THE WELL BY THE GATE 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



I 

THE WELL BY THE GATE 

**0h that one would give me water to drink of the well of 
Bethlehem, which is by the gate!*' — 2 Sam. xxiii. 15. 

It is the cry of a homesick heart. It is an 
episode from one of the ruggedest and most 
educative parts of the life of David,— shepherd 
and soldier, singer and king. 

David was at Adullam, in the region of Tekoa, 
a little southeast of Bethlehem. He was a warrior 
now, wonted to rough fare and to all the priva- 
tions of outlawry : through the enmity of the king 
whom he had been appointed to succeed, an ad- 
venturer, and, though almost within sight of his 
birthplace, an alien. 

There are vital thrusts against which no harness 
of war is proof, and one day there came upon 
David there a consuming desire for a taste of that 
water which was at the gate-side of the little 
town, so few miles away, where once had been 
his home. 

3 



4 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



Easily we read enough between the lines of the 
incident to comprehend that the thirst was not so 
much in this man's throat as in his heart. Amid 
these deeds of arms his spirit was wounded and 
parched. A glimpse, a recollection, and then a 
sharp longing not to be stifled — water 

Just behind those hills lay the scene of his 
boyhood. The whole landscape rushed upon his 
memory, — the kindly old olive trees, the winding 
familiar paths between, the bleating flocks, the 
kine lowing in the afternoon. His soul gave a 
great lurch toward it all, and his lips burned for 
one more swallow, with his hand for a cup, of 
that cooling spring. Overpoweringly he remem- 
bered the days when his now bronzed face was 
ruddy, the evenings when he piped the sheep 
to their fold, that night when he strode home 
shouldering on the one side that hurt but rescued 
lamb and on the other the skins of the lion and 
the bear, — all that dear domestic horizon, with 
its rural duties and its untroubled faith. Now, 
captain-at-arms though he was, the rushing asso- 
ciations forced from him the exceeding cry : Oh 
that one would give me water to drink of the well 
of Bethlehem, which is by the gate 

Who does not know, or at least who will not 
know, the wistful yearning, that when it comes, 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



5 



comes so full and passionate for the old width 
and imagination, the plain joys and complete 
satisfactions of childhood ? In what relief and 
reality does memory's spectroscope set the sim- 
plest things of youth ! How it cleanses the pal- 
impsest of the years to get back the holiest text 
so overwritten with lesser thoughts ! 

The lore of the household, of which our store 
is so precious, abounds in these tender revertings 
for the cot and the cottage. The old oaken 
bucket ; Rock me to sleep, mother " ; Home, 
sweet home " — these and such as these, of whose 
echoes our folk-song is full, are the anthology of 
the heart. Well does Burns say of the lyrics 
of the fireside, Compared with these, ItaHan 
trills are tame." A literature with no psalms and 
no cradle-songs were poor indeed, and the life 
that does not cherish these is a harp untuned. 

There are gains for all our losses, 

There is balm for all our pain : 
But when youth, the dream, departs, 
It takes something from our hearts 

That can never come again." 

A while ago I passed carwise through a ham- 
let of Pennsylvania, near where the upper Sus- 
quehanna wanders toward the sea, and where once 
I lived, a boy of twelve : but how strangely the 



6 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



hills, the stream, the street, had dwindled and 
shrunk together ! Size is relative to that central 
affection Avhich magnifies all its store of sur- 
roundings. That which is about has its perspec- 
tive, not in fact but in love's wiser fancy. We 
cannot restore the outer ratio of what made life's 
earliest impressions. A secret and vanished beauty 
fails of reattachment to visible things. The lute 
is hushed, the chairs are vacant, and Charles 
Lamb's plaint springs to paUid lips : — 

" Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood, 
Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse, 
Seeking to find the old familiar faces." 

The well is shallower. The waters that "were 
wont to go warbling so softly and well " do not 
flow as they used to flow. Their gush and 
sparkle have escaped and something tepid and 
tasteless has come. The sweetness was about, 
not in, the draught. The taste was in the tongue 
and the lips that have changed. 

David wanted, not what he thought he wanted 
and asked for so importunately, but his child- 
hood. It was that which haunted his faint and 
dusty heart. The three brave companions could 
not fetch it. The fountain of a past youth could 
not be forced at the sword's point, nor the cup of 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



7 



a life irrevocably departed become the trophy of 
war. And so when they came from their loyal 
and daring quest, David poured out what they 
brought him as a libation, nor would he take 
for himself what had been their jeopardy. He 
wanted it no more, or rather, knew that what he 
wanted with it was other and impossible. 

Suffer, then, a word upon all this to you who 
sometimes, even if not yet old, turn with thirsty 
eyes toward an earlier time, and who make your 
own the substance of this lonely cry. Perhaps 
the parching years have made your lips and 
throats to ache with want, — sailors adrift upon 
brackish floods that offer never a drop to drink." 
You who would give all you have for that boyish 
simplicity with which you knelt at a crib-side 
and kissed a pure good night upon lips whose 
earthly benediction has been so long time mute, — 
look ! Listen, as that little lad yonder with his 
small treble prattles the twiHght prayer — " Now 
I lay me down to sleep." It is yourself 

You have read that sweet sketch of Holmes, 
ending with " Two tickets for Boston," and then 
with the long deep sigh — No, one ticket for 
Boston." 

" Oh for a man to arise in me 
That the man that I am may cease to be !" 



8 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



Oh, God, for an hour of yesterday, for but one 
taste of that old innocence, for that blessedest 
tether of a mother's apron-strings " — oh, for 
''the well which is by the gate"! 

But the real gate and the path to it are still 
accessible, and to every way-weary soul, like good 
news from a far country, there is offered a cup of 
cold water and a childhood reattained. O dis- 
ciple of regret and longing, it is from Him who 
can transform this transient valley of Baca! It 
is from " that spiritual Rock that followed them." 
It is clean and cool from more than artesian 
depths. It is freely bestowed of Him who ven- 
tured, who gave, His life to fetch it for you. Re- 
fuse it you may not; for He alone had such a 
right of jeopardy on your behalf It is drawn 
from the wells of salvation, clear as crystal. Take 
it to your lips and heart, ''a fountain of gar- 
dens, . . . and streams from Lebanon." He who 
for you said, " I thirst," who thirsts for you, de- 
clared, " Whosoever drinketh of the water that I 
shall give him shall never thirst" — never again 
unavailingly ! 

Know where these waters run. Forget them 
not. For you may clear a large place for yourself, 
or come to a cave : but it will crowd you some 
day, the intense desire, the need, the memory. 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



9 



God grant you then the song : " Spring up, O 
well ! Sing ye unto it !" 

It is no mirage, and this Old Testament story 
is an idyl and message of its truth. Press that 
day, — press now, — to the gates of Bethlehem, — a 
man's heart in a child's home. It is the house 
of bread," city of Ruth, of Ruth's great-grandson, 
of Mary, of the Babe, and the shepherds of the 
temple of flocks, and the wise men. To him 
who cries, As the hart panteth after the water 
brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God," 
the antiphon answers, that clasps in merciful as- 
surance every homing spirit, Neither shall they 
thirst any more ; for the Lamb shall lead them." 

Comrades all, not just as David's servitors, but 
at trial, cost and danger, let us be those who can 
bring the solace of a renewing God to them that 
are ready to perish. To carry to one of the least 
of these the cup of healing is a soldier's task and 
a saint's. Freely you have received, freely give. 

For the streams for which the spirit cries are 
not from any of the hills of time, and that which 
of all things our bodies need most and need most 
constantly — water — is a parable. 



II 

THE CARPENTER'S SON 



N 



II 



THE CARPENTER'S SON 
"Is not this the carpenter's son?" — Matt. xiii. 55. 

A MOTHER telling me of a dear child whom 
God had taken the short way to heaven, of his 
face and form, his winsomeness, exclaimed at last : 
" Oh, if I had a picture of him to show you !" 
and I said : I do not need it ; your story is more 
than any mere likeness." Love is the best camera 
and the heart the truest sensitive plate — there is 
no other photography like that. It is surer than 
the light itself 

We have no authentic pictorial proof of what 
Christ's face was hke. But we need none. The 
loving and living story is more real than protrait- 
ure. Here, as in a mirror, we behold the glory 
of His gentleness and grandeur. And we know 
Him, too, by their inspired faces who have, soul 
to soul, begun to wear His image. No intagho 
could be more definite. Certainly those who 
resemble Him here will recognize Him yonder. 
They shall see His face, be like Him, and know 

13 



14 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



as they are known. God's providence must, by 
some unexplained wisdom, have refrained from 
preserving any detailed record of that childhood 
and youth. The clumsy apocryphal attempts 
neither have the sanction of tradition nor do they 
give anything that fits His mature personality as 
reflected in the gospels. We are left to read be- 
tween the so few written lines and to imagine by 
His pubHc ministry what He was in those days 
concerning which our affectionate curiosity is not 
gratified — those other things " of which the 
earliest were hidden safe in Mary's heart. 

His generation all unconscious of what it con- 
tained, persecutors and disciples yet in their 
cradles, the Wonderful One grew on. A babe, a 
lad, a youth, a man — He served out that appren- 
ticeship of task and trial by which His heavenly 
Father prepared Him for the stupendous burden, 
the exceeding sorrow, the absolute victory. With- 
out leaving the warrant of what is given we can 
surely assert something, and reverently infer some- 
what more, concerning the expansion of that white 
soul. Remember all the time that God gave that 
young life exactly the best environment for His 
growth in wisdom. He trained the Son of man 
amid simple things and first principles. He brought 
Him to the closest terms with the average hfe. 



THE CARPENTER'S SON 



15 



He familiarized Him with the daily problems of 
plain men. No, the throne does not make the 
prince. Verily, it is true, " God hath often a great 
share in a little house " — a little stairway, a little 
room, a little lattice, a little closet. Imagination 
itself steps softly and whispers, " It was here." 

At Nazareth. In beautiful Galilee, on the south- 
ern ridge of Lebanon. The hills rose sharply 
and high, cut by the rain grooves. There were 
views — snow-silvered Hermon to the north, to 
the west Carmel and the Mediterranean blue ; 
Tabor, six miles southeast, and beyond Gilead 
and Gilboa. The Sea of Galilee eighteen miles 
to the east. Less than a Sabbath day's journey 
would take Him to nobler prospects than that 
temple turret gave. How well He must have 
studied all that landscape ! It seems to have been 
a rough village. A pretty place may be a very 
wicked place ; but the worst can be a good dis- 
cipline. This was Christ's school, but His pres- 
ence did not make it hospitable. There He 
preached first. Twice they flouted Him and once 
attempted His life. Their unbelief shut the door. 
Would He anger none now ? 

It was a dutiful boyhood. He was "subject 
to his parents." In that plain household He 
learned about moth and rust and the much- 



i6 THE WELL BY THE GATE 

patched garment. He found room there to keep 
the two great commandments. He was a good 
son, learning obedience " and in all things hke 
unto His brethren." He had good training ; for 
Joseph was a just man, and His mother w^as — 
Mary. He searched the Scriptures and remem- 
bered them — their broad spiritual wealth was His. 
There He found the solaces of the interior life, 
and learned that life is not by bread alone. He 
found quiet shelters for meditation (alas ! so little 
our practice). The solitude was populous and 
prayer as natural as love. He was near to all the 
vital breaths of the open country and to those 
overtones of joy and peace — God's obligato — 
which are always sounding when a pure heart 
listens. With what fine untarnished senses He 
appreciated the physical w^orld, with what an ear 
to hear He caught its meaning ! So in the cool 
of that day whose heat and travail was to be 
so terrible, He grew in stature — ('^ He hammered 
through "). 

Who will learn, may. God's best schools are 
not always those most briUiantly endowed. The 
foot of Mount Tabor was better than the feet of 
Gamaliel. Tarsus was yet to be tutored by Naza- 
reth. Here w^as no dreamer theorizing about the 
masses. He was one of the mass. He earned 



THE CARPENTER'S SON 



17 



His living. Once our text was a sneer, " Is not 
this the carpenter's son?" Mark leaves off the 
last word. Either is true to the fact. They 
taunted Him with being a common man. He 
had a trade (as all Hebrew boys had, usually 
their father's), and He supported Himself by it. 
The Prince of the house of David, the Messiah, 
was a mechanic — a house-builder. They all knew 
Him in Nazareth — by sight, they thought they 
knew Him — their estimates were as self-satisfied 
and superficial as all of ours are apt to be of those 
who work for us. But He was no recluse. The 
boys and neighbors saw Him daily. Many had 
His work in their houses. Perhaps some who 
went to cast Him down over that hill lived in 
houses He had built. It is so yet. 

No doubt the bench could long be pointed out 
where He wrought— the quaint Oriental tools ; 
be sure none others ever did such honest work. 
He wanted no wages that He did not earn. What 
would you not give for a chisel, a shaving, from 
that shed ? But wherever modest, earnest work 
is done, there is a truer souvenir of Christ than 
any relic could be. Would you not like to live 
in a house He had built ? But you can engage 
Him to build your dwelling if you choose. In- 
deed, except the Lord build your house, they 
2 



i8 THE WELL BY THE GATE 

labor in vain that build it — it never will be a 
home. He built this house. This is, indeed, the 
Builder ! Not clothed in soft raiment. The hand 
that was pierced for our sins was browned and 
roughened by day labor. He who made the 
earth and founded it, set up its pillars and laid the 
beams of His chambers, without whom was not 
anything made that hath been made, has, Him- 
self the foundation, reared that in this earth which 
no floods shall wrench asunder nor torrents un- 
dermine. Divine Lord ! Thou whom the builders 
rejected. Thou glorious architect and artisan in 
one, build us into that temple, which out of the 
quarry of the ages rises toward the day of the 
topstone and the shouting. 

Many of the instances which pointed His teach- 
ings came out of our Lord's experience as a 
craftsman, — the man who did not count the cost, 
the man who built on the sand. In that frugal 
home He knew the pathos of daily economy, 
work to do not only, but to find, the taxes to 
meet, and all the rest of the cotter's frugal task. 
He helped Mary to contrive for all those brothers 
and sisters, doubtless often telling her : Our 
Father knows that we have need of all these 
things." We can see one reason why He was 
drawn toward that Bethany household. Mary 



THE CARPENTER'S SON 



19 



had always found Him so wise and willing, no 
wonder that she said at Cana, "Whatsoever He 
saith unto you, do it." 

Christ feels for the widow and the fatherless 
and for all who earn their bread in the sweat of 
their brow. What contempt that royal workman's 
way pours upon all pride of ease and luxury ! 
Tasks that He so beautified and beatified let none 
now call common. That carpenter's shop was a 
thing that angels looked into, singing new praises. 
The throne exchanged for the workbench ! Well 
might the sneer at " the carpenter " have frozen 
on the lips that framed it. Blessed testimony 
even of the blind and captious ! The derision of 
the Nazarenes is the ascription of Christendom. 

Two great questions I ask you to dwell upon 
for a little longer : First, that manhood is superior 
to circumstances. He who will follow the King's 
Son may well cross that lowly threshold to see 
how the tedious unites with the heroic. A true 
soul does not worry about an arena. That remote 
village, that cottage, those hill paths, sufficed a 
Saviour's thirty years of preparation ! He needed 
no further apparatus of goodness. No drudgery 
delayed His full growth. Unanxious He waited 
till that work was done. There He thought out 
and wrought out the beatitudes, first showing 



20 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



piety at home and requiting His parents. Re- 
member, if you think your horizon narrowed : — 

" Just such as I He trod this earth, 
With every human load, but sin." 

No matter if your hfe is hidden — if it is hid with 
Christ in God." Simphcity may find fehcity. 

It also teaches us the dignity of work. Idleness 
is a sin. Only a worker is respectable — every 
other is a moral pauper. It is worker or shirker. 
Christ honored the royal law of labor. He knew 
real things and was not a charge to the world. 
He came to make the best that the world knows 
native to the humblest." Coming to regenerate 
society, He never implied that the world owes 
every man a living," whether he earns it or not. 
He came to serve. The gospel of the Mechanic 
refuses those who refuse a man's task. It ennobles 
as it enables the toilers of the world — and gives 
an evangel to the loom, the bench, the forge, 
" that they may be with the King for his work." 
The bone and sinew of the nation are in brawny 
arms matched with brave hearts. Whatever 
honors labor blesses the land, and all that de- 
grades this debases that. Christ is the friend of 
all who toil and pray. A workingman Himself, 
He cares for the aching eyes and tired fingers, and 



THE CARPENTER'S SON 



21 



says, Come unto me, ye that labor, and I will 
give you rest." He arrays Himself against the 
oppressor and the cheat — against him who wants 
another's work without paying for it, and against 
him who wants another's pay without working for 
it. He is the staunch ally of the honest toiler, 
and says of every one such, The same is my 
brother." 



Ill 

THE TOWER OF SILOAM 



Ill 



THE TOWER OF SILOAM 

" Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the 
Galileans, because they suffered such things ? I tell you, Nay : 
but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those 
eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, 
think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in 
Jerusalem? I tell you. Nay." — Luke xiii. 2-5. 

These questions and their answer affirm cer- 
tain deep and necessary distinctions concerning 
the moral government of God, and to estabhsh 
these distinctions and hold them fast can dispose 
of much that always will baffle a hasty and im- 
patient interpretation of earth's events, and can 
vitally enhghten and encourage us amid their 
intricacies of trouble and surprise. 

The distinction to be made is that which lies 
between the two features and departments of 
divine law — the one outward and physical, with 
its results consummated here ; and the other 
inward and moral, with its issues and sanctions 
largely postponed. 

For, note carefully just what Christ said. He 

25 



26 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



was speaking of interpreting the time," with its 
especial pubUc warnings and its especial signifi- 
cance and preluding of some mighty event ; and 
some who heard Him immediately mentioned the 
recent official murder by which Pilate had made 
an example of certain Galileans, and to terrorize 
the restless agitators of Jerusalem had smitten a 
group of these, mingling as it were their blood 
with that of the sacrifices to which they had 
gathered. The mention of these men to Christ 
carried, perhaps, the suggestion that they w^ere 
some radical fellow provincials of Himself, who, 
for temerity against the existing order of things, 
had paid as He yet might pay. He takes it up 
and adds yet another current instance. With the 
reserved funds of the temple, arbitrarily seized, 
Pilate had been constructing an aqueduct into 
Jerusalem. The chief Jews had violently pro- 
tested, and when at Siloam a tower fell, crushing 
eighteen of the workmen, it had been pronounced 
a special visitation. 

Our Lord insisted that the incident of such 
exceptional deaths was not to be misinterpreted 
in such a way as to turn attention from general 
public guilt and its general retribution. The 
dramatic exception was not to be pressed too far. 
These mangled men were but instances of what 



THE TOWER OF SILOAM 



27 



all pride and perversity should meet. These 
violent warnings were but specimens of the catas- 
trophe already rising cloudy out of the west. 

He meant that no one should exonerate him- 
self from partnership in the universal accounta- 
bility. Harsher calamities were impending, which 
nothing but a profound and popular repentance 
could avert. Change or die, was the alternative 
for all men of Judsea or Galilee — nay, for all 
peoples and generations — until the final finality 
of judgment. Everywhere disorder is the outward 
prophecy and anticipative symptom of doom. 

We well may note how aptly the word of Christ 
reads the moral sky and interprets current affairs. 
He spoke to the times, and the incidents and 
accidents of the day — these, here, the Jericho road, 
the tribute penny, the ostentatious givers, the 
unctuous sanctimony of the Pharisees, the carcass, 
and the eagles. It was direct, vivid, and no won- 
der the truth made a sensation as He let it in so 
full upon traditional sham and godless religion. 
The gossiping conclusion about the massacre and 
the falling masonry He showed to be superficial 
and evasive. Then surely we are to have better 
than a conventional and newspaper philosophy 
upon earth's happenings, and, instructed by Him 
who discerns the event, are to interpret nothing as 



28 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



isolated from final purpose and common concern. 
Daily divine providence writes upon the walls 
that which the wise shall understand." 

But, further and especially, Christ taught that 
"these Galileans" and ''those eighteen" were not 
thereby shown to be sinners and offenders above 
all men." And therein He corrected the notion 
that material injuries to the bodies or estates of 
men have any constant relation to their moral 
characters and furnish any final criterion of these. 
These w^ere not hurt because they were worse ; 
others had not escaped because they were better. 
I tell you, Nay." 

It opens a gateway upon an avenue of profound 
reflection, whereon for a little let us go ; finding, I 
trust, some solvents for questions otherwise too 
hard, some antidotes for satanic suggestions 
against God, some grateful offsets for things that 
now seem inscrutably against us. Suffering may 
be a near or a remote consequence ; it is by no 
means the measure of the sin of the particular 
sufferer. 

1. Christ's doctrine that day was the plainest 
possible assertion of a truth that we often confuse 
— namely, that physical law and moral law and 
their penalties and rewards are highly distinct. 

He emphasizes the moment of this distinction. 



THE TOWER OF SILOAM 



29 



By distinct " I do not mean unrelated, uncon- 
nected, but so far separate in form and intent, in 
method and purpose, that we must not mix them. 
Both of these orders and their issues are of and 
under God, and reveal Him ; nevertheless, mechan- 
ical means and results are separate from spiritual. 

Physical laws, the forms of sense, and the pro- 
gramme of matter, these are different in kind from 
the controls and vindications of that inner being 
which partakes of the divine nature. There are 
analogies and correspondences all along the Hne, 
but nowhere identity or confusion. The body of 
the universe and the living spirit are two realities. 
Physics and psychology are not the same. They 
are together, but they are dual. 

God's systemed and consistent ways of control 
(which, viewed from the under and empirical side, 
we call by the impersonal and abstract term of 
laws ") are related in the unity of that control ; 
but the two elements deal with different areas and 
in separate ways appropriate to each. Each of us 
has in himself a synopsis of these two realms and 
dispensations, as covering the one his bodily and 
outward part, and the other his immaterial and 
immortal part. We are constantly and properly 
warned of the fallacy which lies in any physical 
illustration of moral fact. As a suggestion it may 



30 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



be useful ; as a complete parallel it always fails. 
Quantity and quality deal with terms not inter- 
changeable. 

There is a certain set of established facts, con- 
formity to which makes the laws of bodily health. 
As solid and regular, but quite other, there is a set 
of facts conditioning character. Now, by the 
present intimacy of our souls with our bodies, 
these two codes, though entirely in different planes, 
do condition each other — they mutually (recipro- 
cally) act and react. Moral sanity concerns bodily 
soundness. As the sky tinges the sea, so vigor 
has to do with virtue. But all this ordinary asso- 
ciation by no means merges the identities of the 
two spheres. The relation of the individual soul 
with its present body, though so close and reflex, 
is, after all, but incidental. The station of the 
engineer upon the particular engine is not essential. 
The local is not the necessary. The soul is in 
but not of its convenient but changeable body. 
The physical may be transferred. Bodily, we 
die daily." Metempsychosis is not merely possi- 
ble, but certain. 

And as it is with physical law in this nearest 
approach to our spirits, so it is with that physical 
law at large. Our embodiment has this double 
significance of both the nearness and the separate- 



THE TOWER OF SILOAM 



31 



ness of life and its vessels. We are at once 
incarnate and supercarnal. However closely mun- 
dane passions crowd us, our souls are taller and 
look over their heads. The transient is adjudged 
now ; the permanent waits. 

Translating objective and subjective realities, 
each into the terms of the other, we must (if 
careful) distinguish their essential unHkeness, dis- 
cerning between outward and inward success, 
between inner and outer penalty and reward. Un- 
derstanding this division, we must keep in mind 
that the physical side is limited by physics — it is 
adjusted to the present only — its sanctions are 
insistently temporal ; but the cardinal soul is 
under vital laws, to which this estate is but the 
first chapter, and whose compensations move in 
circles to which the article of death is but a mere 
item. God's physical justice is swift and immedi- 
ate, but His moral justice advances '^with slow 
pace and silent feet." One is prompt, the other is 
long-suffering; but both are sure. The slower 
mills grind finest. The casual exceptions — the 
immediate and signal punishments in kind — but 
show that those who disregard moral law are apt 
to disregard physical, and these reveal those. 
But still the inferences, though they do recognize 
judgment as already proceeding, cannot estimate 



32 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



that which is deferred, nor estimate the ratio of 
guilt, nor safely attempt a theodicy {i, e,^ an inter- 
pretation of total divine justice) from what is 
revealed in physical penalty of physical transgres- 
sion. 

The fact is premonitory, but its full implications 
still remain conjectural. The skein is too tangled ; 
the problem is too involved. The unveiling of all 
the details — the real and complete evidence — 
awaits the ultimate day. When all is not accessi- 
ble, opinion cannot be conclusive. Sodom does 
not always burn, not every Korah fats the jaws of 
the earth ; but the readiness with which we make 
coincidence moral shows our intuition of a finer 
adjudication, in which the sumptuousness of Dives 
and the hunger of Lazarus shall be measured in 
other scales than those of time. 

II. And Christ's I tell you. Nay " warns us 
against any inferences that substitute the apparent 
for the real — warns us against inferring either too 
much or too little — warns us that inferences may 
be inconsequent — warns us both to expect and to 
await. The parallax is too short for us to antici- 
pate the total issue ; too long for us to doubt it. 

The Greek tragedy — all the literature of tragedy 
— grasps the intuition of retributive justice, and 
lies all in the realm of conscience. Its poetic 



THE TOWER OF SILOAM 



33 



justice is not imaginary, but it is imagined and its 
oracles are obscure, if (and only if) we think that 
present reality conforms to its futuritive dramatiza- 
tion. The interlaced facts reserve the full decision. 
That both comes and tarries. 

"Some men's sins are evident, going before unto 
judgment; and some men also they follow after. 
In like manner also there are good works that are 
evident ; and such as are otherwise cannot be hid " 
(i Tim. V. 24, 25). There are two sets of sanctions 
suiting two phases of law. Just so far as a man 
knows and keeps either set of laws — the spiritual 
and the physical — just so far will he reap the 
blessings possible to that set. Temporal obedi- 
ence, temporary blessing. Moral obedience, moral 
blessing. " Whatsoever a man soweth." " Each 
seed after its own kind." The one obedience 
ought to imply the other, but does not necessarily 
involve it. 

Every kind of law is on his side who keeps it, 
and every kind of law is against him who breaks 
it. The law of gravity, of explosives, of health, 
of contract, of commerce, of art — these laws, 
heeded, become allies. To observe public mo- 
rality finds public approval. And he who obeys 
God has God's approval. All obedience, so far 

as such, works its appropriate results. There 
3 



34 THE WELL BY THE GATE 



are no gratuitous or uncovenanted rewards nor 
any accidental penalties. The goodness and se- 
verity of each law is for itself and not for another. 
This is absolute in moral law, and (however com- 
plicated by the interference of other unjust wills) 
is the tendency in what is physical. And the 
bondage of corruption in which ignorance and 
violence distrain natural tendency is not always 
to endure. 

Distinguish. A profane man may be robust ; a 
false man may be an artist ; a covetous man may be 
skillful ; and a man may be devout, truthful, gentle, 
brave, and yet (under the operation of laws these 
virtues do not concern) may fail in business or die 
of consumption. Lord Bacon was the father of 
modern philosophy, but he took bribes. Marl- 
borough never lost a battle, but he embezzled. 
Keats died in poverty. Bunyan was a jail bird. 
McKinley was shot. 

Material success is no final token of God's 
favor, nor material failure of His frown. Approval 
for one kind of obedience abridges no penalty of 
other transgression. Penury and pain without 
piety have no promises as such. Of all rogues 
it is the duller part who enter prison. They are 
not necessarily offenders above all." Inferior 
shrewdness (such is the law of shrewdness) allows 



THE TOWER OF SILOAM 



35 



dull rascality to get its deserts more promptly. 
Thus the smart outdo the stupid — that proves 
only itself. If the wicked prize itself buys out 
the law;" the more wicked it, though terrestrially 
it escapes unwhipt." But, saith Shakespeare, 
'Tis not so above." 

Who did sin that this man was born blind — 
he or his parents ?" Neither," said Christ. The 
long circuit which transmits the shock of remote 
sin lies too deep for tracing. The problem is too 
involved for such glib judgments. Sin's disaster 
somewhere, and a race involved in the calamity — 
the innocent and the guilty all cousins in suffering, 
but the whole philosophy of the woeful spectacle 
not yet unsealed. Everything is furnished for 
reclamation, nothing for curiosity. In the race- 
unity of its trouble, human vision is made to await 
the consummation which is promised but not yet 
revealed. The law of sin and death operating 
even upon those (as babes) who have not sinned 
individually proves that God for this present re- 
gards mankind, and deals with it, as a vital unit. 
It is not simple, but it is evident. Long ago the 
blow fell upon corporate man of which all mortal 
ills are but the rowen — behold a race sin-smitten 
and the irretrievable physical penalty ; but behold 
also a spiritual intervention from a plane above 



36 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



physics ; restoration by a Redeemer, and the 
trophies thereof! There is no collision nor clash- 
ing of law or plan. Exactly the seen and the 
unseen move in parallel obedience. Man is the 
only offender — man the law-breaker. But to de- 
cipher and trace responsibility and to assign phys- 
ical consequence to moral cause, even through 
a third and fourth generation, is beyond our 
wisdom. 

The ethical impulse must associate evils with evil, 
but, save to search and judge our own misdoings, 
we must endure and wait. All that is abnormal is 
akin; further we cannot go. Nature cannot tell 
us. Sphinx-like she looks with calm, impartial 
face upon moral good and evil. The crime she 
punishes is ignorance — she is physical and keeps 
neutrality. She is a parable of merciless law and 
a declaration of outer justice alone. In this she 
throws the spirit back upon its Maker for those 
other laws that heal those who meet them fully, 
and turns us toward those eyes that live. So we 
are bidden " to change our minds from that evil 
which destroys unto that mercy which saves. 

III. Christ used the Galilean slaughter and the 
Siloam accident to teach a far broader lesson than 
they grasped who sought to explain these. 

We are to shun a mischievous moralizing which 



THE TOWER OF SILOAM 



37 



once characterized a certain sort of Sunday-school 
book. There are present inner penalties, but 
they are not oftenest shown. The bad boy does 
not always drown, nor the good boy get rich. 
On the other hand, it is as nearsighted to 
reckon that smooth-going sin is immune and en- 
viable. This is the paradox and puzzle of com- 
fortable and complacent evil, but the very pros- 
perity of fools shall destroy them." It was the 
fallacy that underlay the superficial arguments of 
Job's three friends ; that character is a matter of 
circumstantial evidence. This is the monotonous 
pessimism which for our warning is illustrated in 
the major part of the book of Ecclesiastes. The 
plaint is specious from one standpoint, but it is a 
submarine conception of the Giver of life ! It 
puts the truisms of this world in place of the 
truth that God will overrule it all for those who 
wait for Him. Ecclesiastes dwells in common- 
place misery, dismal, but not the whole matter ; 
it is as little like Christianity as the catacombs are 
like a sunrise. 

Mercy moves in its own orbit. Each side of 
tangible sin keeps its own boundaries. Inner 
forgiveness does not remit overt penalty. Res- 
titution amends some offenses, but also some 
scars are worn to the grave. Rescue does not 



38 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



restore the external status. Therefore a true re- 
pentance from evil as such does not stipulate the 
abatement of outer consequences. A drunkard 
reforms, his soul heals, but he nevertheless goes 
to an earlier grave. A Frederick Robertson 
teaches his generation, but his mind is strung too 
tight for his body, and he dies at thirty-seven. 
The Lord put away David's sin, but his child 
died. Ahab averted immediate penalty, but he 
was not accepted. The fruitless tree, in the para- 
ble just following our text, was respited but not 
spared. 

The tendency is that the wicked shall not live 
out half their days,'' but some grow gray in evil. 
The tendency is that "the righteous shall still 
bring forth fruit in old age," but sometimes high 
obedience has assured martyrdom. We may 
indulge no theory of special providences that 
evades the precision of physical effects. Even 
miracles would but confirm the rule. 

Human law touches little else save that which 
concerns man in his person and property ; it has to 
leave the deepest moral vindication for the world 
to come. Both for warning and for consolation 
we are taught to look toward celestial justice as 
the intrinsic thing. Disasters come. A fire de- 
vours here, an earthquake there. Cyclone and 



THE TOWER OF SILOAM 



39 



lightning and rain and sunshine fall upon the just 
and the unjust. The train thunders into the 
collision bearing blasphemer and babe. The end 
is not here. Looking past these relentless shocks 
of mechanism, past the grimly beautiful exactness 
of the physical order, looking on to His moral 
disclosures of the ends which transcend mere 
force, we shall escape both a false confidence and 
a needless foreboding. 

" Nothing has the just to lose 
By worlds on worlds destroyed." 

By and by, hearing the upper parts, we shall 
catch the harmony that now is figured only with 
this mysterious bass. We shall know how even 
stress and pain could cooperate for good to them 
that loved God. The convergence of laws will be 
seen. The clouds appear to be in the same sky 
with the sun and stars, but the vapors are really 
only of the earth. Pain is of this atmosphere; 
peace of that. Therefore we await emancipation 
from these mingled conditions, seeking His esti- 
mate who can carry us through all the surprises 
of mortality, and by the law of the spirit of life for 
ever free us from the law of sin and death. 



IV 



JOHN'S THREE DEFINITIONS 
GOD 



IV 



JOHN'S THREE DEFINITIONS OF GOD 

*' These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the 
Christ." — John xx. 31. 

Of all the original twelve apostles, the apostle 
John left for all time the legacy that is of the 
deepest and most varied wealth. 

The figure and temperament and acts of Peter 
are far more conspicuous in that scenery of 
Christ's century which is sketched in the first five 
New Testament books. The life and writing of 
the apostle Paul occupies a larger and more obvi- 
ous place in the new Scripture. With either of 
these men we feel more intimately acquainted. 
Their personality and motion carries more of 
windage and tangible impact. 

It is only by closer study that we come to feel 
the potency and draught of the great son of 
Zebedee. His manner and meaning and message 
require a more reflective analysis. He is less 
dramatic and apparent. The sweep of his thought 
and purpose comes more slowly to our appreci- 
ation. But the revelation of God in Christ found 

43 



44 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



in the personality and grasp of the fourth evangel- 
ist an instrument and an interpreter whose mysti- 
cal insight and far-sighted comprehension gathered 
and conveyed the truth of truth with a sureness 
and a sublimity that shines on through the ages 
as the star Rigel shines in the belt of Orion, or 
Vega in the constellation Lyra. Immutable in 
the records which translate the Son of God into 
the language of adoring wonder and absolute 
loyalty, indispensable to our ever-deepening and 
never completed apprehension of that supreme 
and all-manifesting life, the words of him who lay 
on Jesus' breast are alive with that contact, and 
impart the palpitating love which there they 
learned. 

It was his life to make the world know his 
Lord as he knew him. Christ imparted Himself 
to this profound and capable nature that through 
that nature He might evermore convey to souls 
Hke-minded the power and scope of His per- 
petual interpretation of God and of man, of crea- 
tion and eternity. Of all those deeds John was 
an observer — the wonders, the mercies, the im- 
maculate sorrows, the paradox of the cross, the 
tenantless and angel-ordered grave with its ten- 
ure as impotent as Pilate's seal, and its testimony 
as solid as the rock upon which streamed the 



JOHN'S THREE DEFINITIONS OF GOD 45 



resurrection light. John knew all the actors and 
agents of those surcharged years. He knew 
GaHlee and Judaea, priest and centurion, the home 
at Bethany, the family of Nazareth. 

He heard and held the parables, the prayers, 
the promises, the prophecies. He was upon the 
Mount of Transfiguration and at Olivet. He 
knew Stephen and Paul. He understood Peter 
and Luke and James the Just. Thomas and 
Philip were his fellows. He shared the wonders 
of Pentecost. He met the furnace-blasts of perse- 
cution. He survived his comrades, and saw the 
seed flung abroad and taking root in the convic- 
tions of the complicated and changing world. 

And at last, ripe for the task, remembering, re- 
flecting, listening, with an eagle vision that looked 
down upon the world and time, and with a flight 
that swam in the upper and cloudless skies, he 
wrote. The last of the twelve witnesses, and 
ready when the call should come for the renewed 
visible companionship of the First and the Last 
and the Living One, he put to record that which 
he had heard and seen and handled of the Word 
of Life. It was mature, competent — it gave the 
inwardness as one soul had treasured and proved 
it, and it is holy with His presence who breathes 
through its transcendant thoughts. The whole 



46 THE WELL BY THE GATE 



portrayal and portraiture is John's epitome of the 
things which were most surely believed by those 
most competent to try and to tell. It is also 
Christ's epitome of the beloved disciple. For 
what can understand, what reconstruct, what can 
prophesy, what impart, what can endure, like love ! 

The personality of this profound and intense 
believer and follower is revealed in what he wrote, 
it is also veiled by it. John is throughout, but 
he is retired by a greater. Yet while we follow 
the significance of the gesture, we need not for- 
get him whose hand points us to the object. 

What John saw and knew and felt is the reflex 
proof of his competency, and completes his testi- 
mony. The witness is also the result of the 
truth he utters. 

What John's nature was is shown by His dis- 
cernment who called him. What his training was 
the three years and the perhaps threescore that 
followed give evidence. The fisherman neither 
explains nor hinders the philosopher. For phil- 
osopher he was — loving wisdom and attaining it 
— surpassing Plato, and so all others, both in his 
material and his use of it — handling the last prob- 
lems of being and divinity, of man and motive, of 
event, environment, and destiny. He does not 
propound problems, he solves them, and not an 



JOHN'S THREE DEFINITIONS OF GOD 47 



interrogation, but an exclamation of satisfied joy 
punctuates his concluding word ! To him finis 
was but relative and terrestrial. It is a conjunc- 
tion which implies a world that can contain all 
the story. Moreover he is Baconian. He builds 
not upon propositions, but upon events. His task 
is to expound a biography. His final synthesis 
shows how the best that ever was declares the 
utmost that can be. 

The Incarnation for him solves all questions 
in the world and out of it." He binds the great 
given facts of Christ's life into a unity and reads 
them as a whole. He sees why the roots bear 
the fruits. The radical thought of John com- 
passes all the queries and quests of the soul, and 
" What know we greater than the soul is the 
mental attitude of the modern world which, not 
in spite of the fact that he was poet, but because 
he was that too, finds its most vital voice in 
Alfred Tennyson. John was poet, too, and so the 
fisher of Galilee gathers the greatest both of 
reason and of rapture, and by love as by logic 
hath us in the net. Human utterance may fall 
below his search and sureness, but never can it 
surpass them. All other reasoning is but a 
second best, and commentary upon that second 
best fails of the upper springs. 



48 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



How far and wide and high John's thought 
went — what it compassed and applied; what 
ranges of relation it beheld — this appears in three 
great declarations and definitions, which, under 
the revelation that is in Christ, he made concern- 
ing the essential and immutable nature of God. 
From Him of whom he testified " in Him was 
life; and the life was the light of men," he 
reached out and up to the thought of what the 
ultimate Being is. He states that Being's nature 
in three terms of its active demonstration. What 
God is, responsive intelligence must know by what 
He does, and know best and supremely through 
His nearest and most commanding and most 
appealing manifestation. What God is, in His 
inmost essence, what the life is which originates 
and answers our life, John had found in that One 
whose nature was to him the revelation of the 
eternal and the absolute. Here is ontology. And 
the grandeur and finality of the conceptions is the 
warrant of that appreciation of Jesus Christ out 
of which they grew. 

These three resolute conclusions are : " God is 
Light," " God is Spirit," " God is Love." 

These are final truths ; and for John's grasp of 
them, all that he wrote being in evidence, Christ 
accounts and Christ only. Every estimate of 



JOHN'S THREE DEFINITIONS OF GOD 49 



God, then as now, is colored and fashioned by the 
soul's estimate of Christ. Light, spirit, love ; 
where either of these three is, there, in degree, 
God is ; and where God is, there these three are. 
But these are elements of personality and have 
no reality outside of that. Our capacity to know 
them is the correspondence between us and the 
invisible nature which is before and under and 
through all things. 

Light is a motion and a communication. It is 
a creative revelation. It is a thing, and darkness 
is not a thing, but an absence, just as silence is 
the negation of sound. A finer skill in physics 
may yet coordinate or even identify these two sets 
of vibrations, proving that sound is invisible color, 
and that color is inaudible sound. Then the ear 
and the eye are complementary, and we have two 
senses of the same thing. Then sunlight is only 
music in an upper scale and harmony is a vision. 
But truth, spoken or written, is still communica- 
tion. Light is not only a medium and an agent, 
it is an author. Strictly, the ether is the agent 
and the hght is that which travels it. Sight is the 
effect and also the end intended; but the wire 
that reddens under the electric charge, and the 
leaping nerve that receives the charge — these are 
not electricity itself. Force is not an agent, but a 
4 



so 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



manifestation — back of the thrill is will. The 
waves are messengers, but the message is the 
communication of a being who understands how 
to send the message to a being that understands 
how to receive it. Light is the communication 
of being ! It does also reach and affect what is 
irresponsive and unaware. It is chemical too, but 
that is only to say that 

God fulfills Himself in many ways," 

and is not without effect even upon those who 
have only mineral or vegetable hearts. 

John gazed deep into two wonderful eyes — his 
soul saw and knew that it was seen — and then 
feeling the source of infinite beauty, of all that 
creates and satisfies vision, even the inmost, he 
wrote, " Whatsoever doth make manifest is light." 

That was the true Light, which lighteth every 
man that cometh into the world." He begins 
his story where Genesis began. The gospel, too, 
opens with the all-revealing Light. Creation is 
one with Christ. 

Spirit. What is it? What is it not? The 
soul, which cannot define itself in terms of the 
material and formal world, knows, by a knowledge 
which objects may illustrate, and so were meant 
to, which objects at once answer and obey, that it 



JOHN'S THREE DEFINITIONS OF GOD 51 



transcends these, and that they can neither origi- 
nate nor deny it. It is mind, it is will, it is energy. 
It is parentage and birthright. John saw sense 
and substance obey the authority of a spirit. He 
recalled that Christ said, I will not leave you 
orphans, I will come to you," and thereupon, 
under the conviction that the Unseen had re- 
vealed the compatibility of spirit with a veiling 
and Hmiting form, and that he had beheld the 
glory of the Word by whom all things were 
made',' he wrote, No man hath seen God at any 
time; the only begotten Son, . . . He hath de- 
clared Him " and reported His word, He that 
hath seen Me hath seen the Father." 

It is spirit " that ordereth all things." Not a 
soulless world, but personal mind, all in all. 
Cause is back of process. Motion is the answer 
of life. Creation is a garment. The bodies out 
of which we peer are but clothing. Nature is 
instrumental, and is always in the ablative case. 
God is the nominative. Prayer is the highest act 
of self-affirmation. 

" Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and spirit with spirit can 
meet; 

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet." 

God is Love. To love is to live. Really to live 
is to seek not one's own. Paul was taught by the 



52 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



same teacher in that Hfe whose ideal had its utter- 
ance in the 13th chapter of the Corinthian letter. 
The various testimony is providential — its au- 
thority is one. He that loveth not knoweth 
not God." " Every one that loveth is born of 
God." Love is procreative. 

But John had seen love bear and bleed. He 
knew love face to face. He understood what love 
would do to bring itself near to a world that lust 
had wrecked, and to heal the hearts that ache by 
love's loss. Did Plato, or Aristotle, or Leibnitz, 
or Kant, or Bacon ever uphold such an all-encom- 
passing finality ? Here is a greater than Newton, 
for love is the law of the soul's gravity. Love is 
of God and unto God. He that abideth in love 
abideth in God, and God abideth in him." 

There were three quahties or characteristics of 
the apostle John that were reflected and summed 
up in these three profound and crystal affirmations. 
These personal habits or aptitudes are shown in 
the temper and bearing of all that he wrote. He 
inadvertently yet entirely reveals his own nature 
in what he pens. It was because John was him- 
self so susceptible to certain influences that he 
was so fit to impart them. 

First, he is shown to have been remarkably 
intuitive and reflective. The deepest chords of 



JOHN'S THREE DEFINITIONS OF GOD 53 



his being responded in music to the tones of his 
Master's discourse, and to the power and pathos 
of His deeds. To his rapt and intense meditation 
the simplest and most deHcate hints were seminal 
and apocalyptic. Every fact is sacred to him 
upon which the realization of Christ's nature and 
errand is confirmed. He seized the very spirit of 
that life so lofty in its loneliness and so tenderly 
true. He appropriated so fully the subjective and 
essential thought of Christ that he at last is ready 
more than any other to see the gospel from Christ's 
own point of view, and to comprehend its final 
imphcations. He especially reports the words 
the Lord addresses to his very own. The other 
evangelists dwell more upon the detail and effect 
of the gracious wonders— John upon the meaning 
of Him who so wrought. The others unfold the 
swift parables — ^John handles their master key. 
Realistic and historical always, and so safe-guarded 
from pantheistic sublimation, evolving nothing 
from fancy, but ever sinking deeper the plummet 
of reflection, he thought so much, so far, but ever 
so close, that one feels that his very style is like 
his Teacher's, and that the voice that had so sunk 
into the depths of a capable soul is reproduced. 
The fourth Gospel is phonographic ! John so 
meditated and pondered that the great reality was 



54 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



clear to him. With that logic which is implicit 
and transcendant in intuition^ he bridged and 
harmonized the antithesis between this divine 
nature and its human conditions. To him all 
that Christ did and said is explained only by what 
He was. Within, about, and up, and on, this, 
such a disciple of such a Master, thought. And 
by and by he wrote, and the book — from the 
oracular prologue to the simple epilogue that 
quietly wonders at the inexhaustible wealth of 
the material — is the Gospel of Light, 

John, again, was a man of lofty imagination. 
It is a great faculty. No one is immortally in- 
structive without it. It sees the invisible. It fore- 
knows and foretells. It is mature and positive. 
It does not discuss, it declares. It takes the wings 
of the morning. To it space is but a terrestrial 
term, and time is no longer. Under the presiding 
conception that the Eternal Spirit had in the 
person of Christ shown Himself concrete with 
man, John views all light and life sub specie eterni- 
tatis. All the gleaming figures of Isaiah and 
Ezekiel, all scene and song, the splendors of 
temple and ceremony, the magnificence and awe 
of war, the scroll of record, the glory of lineage, 
the very stars and suns — become one metaphor 
of the great and terrible day of the Lord. It is 



JOHN'S THREE DEFINITIONS OF GOD 55 



he, whose " soul was grown to match/' that was 
in the spirit upon Patmos, thus to herald the 
terrors of a kindling world and the white beauty 
of the new Jerusalem. 

Last and ever this John was a great lover. 
His meditating and exalted soul knew also that 
affinity and affection for a friend who could satisfy 
the depths, which taught him the inmost and 
uttermost God. And it is that love that breathes 
its benediction in the first Epistle. Its assurance 
is absolute. All is open. We know,'' we 
know" is the key of that whole harmony. The 
Son of Thunder speaks the valediction of all that 
band who companied with Christ. He has be- 
come a grandsire of the Church. He writes to 
all who love as his little children." He has 
survived priest and imperator, the torch, the 
sword, the lions, and the mob. His venerable 
face is bathed with the soft forelight of a swiftly 
approaching joy. Anti-Christ troubles him no 
more. He sleeps. And still at this long remove 
He who guided that pen of John's would fix us 
upon the spirit, the light, the love, it registered. 

These are written, that ye might believe that 
Jesus is the Christ." 



V 

CONVICTION, OR HEARSAY 



V 



CONVICTION, OR HEARSAY 

" Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee 
of Me ?' ' — John xviii. 34. 

A QUESTION is a great opener. This was the 
way of Socrates. It was eminently the way of 
Christ. Both were hated because they were so 
penetrating and so unavoidable. It is because 
questioning is so personal that conventionality 
holds it to be rude. It is the instinct of inquisi- 
tiveness. It is the shortest cut to information. 
It is the way of the child and of the scholar. It 
is the key of knowledge. It is alike a keen tool 
and a pointed weapon. The teacher, the physi- 
cian, the lawyer, must each acquire skill in in- 
terrogation. To catechise means to put to the 
echo. The prologue of Luke (i. 4) says, that 
thou mightest know the infallibility concerning 
the things wherein thou wast catechised.'' All 
questions are demands at sight. 

Life is full of questions — direct, persistent, in- 
evitable. Life itself is all one great question. 
To the query "what is your life?" all our char- 

59 



6o 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



acters are articulate replies, deep or shallow, firm 
or weak, vague or clear. To ask and to answer 
is to live. 

We should be thankful for the many times our 
Lord was so narrowly questioned. We are in- 
debted to the very cavils that drew out many of 
His clearest words. He sought to be questioned 
and compelled it. He invited interview and re- 
warded it. Still He does both. He knows how 
much man needs to ask and to hear, and would 
leave none to the miseries of a questioning con- 
science and an unanswered heart. 

We all know IMunkacsy's picture of Christ be- 
fore Pilate, but when we see the perplexed and 
vexed face of the Roman, though i7i scdile^ and the 
calm penetrative look of Him who stands to be 
cross-examined, we feel that the title should be 
reversed, and that the scene portrays Pilate before 
Christ! 

The sequel of that dialogue makes it intense, 
and it is full of interhnear truth. More readily 
to examine Christ the prefect takes Him aside, 
but, lo ! immediately positions are reversed, and 
the prisoner is the examiner, having the thoughts 
of his heart revealed. And we, if we search this 
Scripture to-day, shall find that it is really search- 
ing us. So God grant it may, and to our eternal 



CONVICTION, OR HEARSAY 6i 



benefit ! With a certain vacillation and also (so 
we may think) with an effort toward official dig- 
nity, Pilate asks, Art Thou a king But before 
any answer to that there rises another matter — 
quiet but so searching — our text, "Sayest thou 
this," etc. Past the diplomacy and the maneu- 
vering, Christ makes the most of the opportunity 
(slight as it is), and reaches clear in after Pilate's 
soul. He makes that anteroom an inquiry room, 
and knocks hard at the door of a heart. But 
Pilate throws another bolt. He shrinks deeper 
into himself, and with a poor disdain, disclaiming 
all personal concern, he retorts, Am I a Jew ?" 
— Told me ?" — of course, how else ? He evades, 
— "what hast thou done?" But Christ will not 
waive that previous question as to His kingship, 
and He declares wherein and whereunto He is 
royal. Not a monarch after the manner of men 
— not martial. Such a king as the Jews would 
not have. A Messiah that was not a nationalist, 
a patriot in their narrow sense they renounced. 
They hated a claim to a sovereignty which at 
once disavowed their weapons and their motives. 
They demanded a visible empire after their own 
partisanship and passion. Their piety was all 
provincial. 

But Christ's claim to a spiritual dominion, to 



62 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



the kingliness of tmtli, should have acquitted 
Him of any offense against Csesar. Convert He 
would, but not subvert. 

What an immortal opportunity Pilate had to 
be brave and just! Alas, it passes! So in that 
dialogue which every soul holds once with Christ, 
there is a critical nearest instant when He deepens 
mere verbal curiosity into a matter of life or death. 
His searching scrutiny is that we may realize what 
lies just under all superficial questions. 

You ask somewhat ? Would you know what 
it implies ? Would you learn what I am ? Do 
yo2i ask ? Or is it all forced upon you by outer 
and unwelcome pressure ? Is it solemn, earnest, 
or perfunctory ? Is it the man who asks or the 
official ? Is it original or borrowed? 

This interview between the temporary prefect 
and the Lord of life emphatically teaches the 
everlasting distinction between faith and hearsay ^ 
— between belief and make-believe. 

Christ distinguishes as to the quality of what 
is said to Him and of Him. That scene and that 
word urges us to discriminate deep-down honesty 
toward the Truthful One, from all compulsory, 
controversial, or conventional talk about Him. 
Faith to be real must be without duress, — for 
one's self and not for another." Fluency of 



CONVICTION, OR HEARSAY 63 



pious phrase, traditional catchwords, all religion of 
hearsay, must meet His inquisition whose quali- 
tative analysis puts us all to the test. Confession 
of Christ cannot be proxied or deputized. Real 
thought may be evaded by trite and borrowed 
words. It is not how much we believe, but how 
much we believe it. Statements may be true and 
yet be meaningless if we have not wrestled out, 
each man his own way, to their mastery. Candor 
and even capacity are sacrificed if we consent to 
measure right by prejudice or party. 

It is a vice of too much of our thinking to-day 
that we get it by subscription and at club rates. 
Many are too preoccupied or impatient to do their 
own thinking and want their ideas peptonized. 
The partisanships of affirmation and of negation 
are alike external to personal responsibility. They 
asked with triumph in His day, " Have any of the 
rulers or of the Pharisees believed on Him?" — but 
it was a iton sequitur. Credo is not plural. Nothing 
so stultifies conscience as to borrow one's opinions 
of duty. Christ said to such, " I know you, that 
ye have not the love of God in yourselves." 
"That which my lips know they shall speak 
sincerely " is the only safeguard of personal truth. 
And if cant of affirmation is the bane of genuine- 
ness, is not the cant of denial equally hollow? 



64 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



Second-hand doubt, ready-made objection, is at 
once the shallowest and most unmanly. It, too, 
says only " what some other told it." 

The propaganda of unbelief finds market for 
its flimsy wares mainly among those gaping critics 
of gospel duty who so readily mistake sciolism 
for scholarship, and who are wilHng to substitute 
for resolute reasons a slanderous quotation. 

It is strange how those w^ho renounce the high- 
est authority are willing to accept the lowest, and 
to put the misconceptions of domineering ob- 
jectors in place of the self-testifying Lord ! This 
is the suicide of individuality. 

We have a right to demand vigilant pains-tak- 
ing conviction from one another, and that, how- 
ever little one may say, that much shall have 
been made his very own. Nothing so becomes 
the soul as homespun. For what is vitally true to 
some other shall be false in you if you but adopt 
it arbitrarily. 

That which we say of God or to God, of Christ 
or to Christ — if it is only memoriter or rote — is 
quite another thing from actual experience. A 
real opinion and purpose is vital, not artificial, and 
has reproductive power, but an opinion about an 
opinion is sterile, and, as Paul said of an idol, " It 
is nothing in the world." Belief in Christ is more 



CONVICTION, OR HEARSAY 65 



than a belief in a belief. If religion (according to 
the best etymology) is from the verb relegere^ 
meaning to ponder, it cannot be the thoughtless 
adoption of the thought of some one else. Each 
man must chew his own food ! 

Nor can religion in the present indicative use 
the terms of the imperfect subjunctive. Conviction 
is far more than a reminiscence. To recite what 
once was my own is not necessarily to avow it 
now. My own deepest being must reenact the 
great submissions and fervent consecrations of 
the saints passed on or I cannot truly share them. 
My to-day must break its own path from yester- 
day to to-morrow. Considering the issue of 
noble lives we are to imitate their faithy not copy 
their inflections — 

They climbed the steep ascent to Heaven, 

Through peril, toil, and pain ; 
O God, to us may grace be given 

To follow in their train !" 

To be " carried to the skies on flowery beds of 
ease " is to renounce the sword and wish for the 
ambulance. The soft Htter of the angels is only 
for souls who have quit them like men in the fore- 
front of the battle. Will and work are the hard 
disciplines of high virtue. The studies that cost 
us most train us best. Character does not pro- 
5 



66 THE WELL BY THE GATE 



ceed on " the line of the least resistance." Chris- 
tianity is not bowing at Christ's name, but bearing 
Christ's yoke, 

" Sayest thou this thing of thyself ?" or is 
your prayer but an echo, your praise the trill 
of the mocking bird, your hope and assurance 
borrowed, your theory of life plagiarized, your 
diary a copy book ! Is Christ your utility or 
your end? Peacocks and parrots are birds of 
low flight ; it is the song of the lark that scales 
the skies. 

The vice of imitativeness is not merely that it 
offers a cheap substitute for originality, but that it 
destroys the power of becoming original. We 
live in a time when the mechanical and the con- 
venient greatly menaces the spontaneous and the 
intuitive. We are tempted by lithograph and 
process to lose the power of free-hand and to be- 
come parasites. Almost all things are furnished 
by pattern and quantity. We feed on canned 
foods, and think that a check settles all balances. 
We content ourselves with caUing near-sighted- 
ness omniscience. We pay editors to think for 
us, and we build our dwellings by the block. 

Such a searching text as this recalls us. It 
challenges that laziness in which individuality 
wilts. It shows the reflex menace of lip-service. 



CONVICTION, OR HEARSAY 67 



In adjuring Pilate to consider the sources of his 
speech, Christ warns us all against false pretenses. 
For the one great thing not to be compounded 
for, not to be manufactured, or lent, or bought, is 
faith. For good faith takes the juror's pledge. 
To say / believe should be as careful and as 
solemn as an oath. A vote is literally a vow. 
Creed is non-transferable. An actual creed is an 
honest account of stock. If it is not alive it is 
stale. Hearsay is no final evidence. One cannot 
give away experience. 

I do not plead for less creed, but for more — for 
far more. But not so much more in quantity as 
in quality y and as to quality, not more in the ob- 
jective realities and relations of religion, as of 
our subjective hold of these. For the outer to 
be the sign of the inner — that the mighty pro- 
test, Credo, may have three dimensions, not only 
length and breadth, but also depth. Any hesita- 
tion is better than a glibness which tricks out its 
debility, whether of doubt or devotion, in shreds 
of pious memoirs and scraps of Bible gotten ear- 
wise. Audit is one thing, credit quite another. 
Better five words with the understanding than ten 
thousand words in an unknown tongue. Do we 
know it? Do we mean it? Formulas which 
have been vital to others may be barren to us. 



68 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



We profane Scripture when we turn phrases that 
once breathed and burned and bled into common- 
place shibboleths. 

Mme. de Stael once said, " Better a smaller 
vocabulary and a fuller heart !" True religion is 
not a self-monologue, but a dialogue with the 
Father of our spirits. It means reciprocity. The 
thing needful is not that we recite the great creeds 
of the fourth century, or match with music the 
lyric fervors of Charles Wesley and Henry Lyte 
— great as these are — but that we " speak that we 
do know." 

First test^ then testimony. It is the tones of 
experience that command attention. What we 
have struggled out is ours. To every earnest 
soul there comes a time when it must revise what 
it has till then taken for granted, and change the 
ore of opinion to the metal of conviction. Food, 
coin, knowledge — we only own what we use, the 
rest owns us. 

Let us ask not fewer questions of Christ, but 
only such as we are wilHng He should answer in 
His own way. The probe is in the hand of One 
who is as tender as He is sure. He may hurt, 
but He can heal. You who so far have taken 
Christ upon the representations, or worse, upon 
the misrepresentations, of others, ''ask, and ye 



CONVICTION, OR HEARSAY 69 



shall receive !" Hear Him, If you were logical 
to your premises— inadequate as they may be — 
if you would follow even your latent convictions 
of what is true in Him, you would come to His 
feet, yes, to His arms, as both your Sovereign and 
Saviour, and say ^^My King And so, with Paul, 
to others (i Thes. i. 5), "Our gospel came not 
unto you in word only^ but," etc. Your heart 
will not be nonplussed if you find Him whose 
work since He was twelve years old has been 
hearing and answering questions ; but if not — ! 



VI 

THE UNKNOWN GOD 



VI 



THE UNKNOWN GOD 

" In all things I observe you as exceedingly religious ; for, pass- 
ing along and noting your objects of worship, I found also an 
altar upon which had been inscribed To the Unknown God, what 
therefore ye not knowing worship that do I announce to you." — 
Acts xvii. 22, 23. [Author'' s translation.) 

That story in the seventeenth chapter of The 
Acts gives us the points of contact and of differ- 
ence between the philosophy of the antique world 
and the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is almost the 
strongest passage in the book. It burns with 
wisdom and suggestion. The circumstances in- 
troduce the speech, whose brief outline of only 
about three hundred words is yet enough to show 
Paul's courage as a Christian and his skill as an 
orator. Adroit in conciliation, delicate in sugges- 
tion, thorough in its adaptation, simple and sweep- 
ing in its logic, issuing in that testimony of which 
he dare not be silent, and which is still the crux 
and the scandal of worldly wisdom — it was just 
like Paul from first to last. 

Silas and Timothy had been left behind at that 

73 



74 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



Beroea where the Scriptures of the prophets had 
such honor, and, waiting for them, all alone, Paul 
sees Athens where the only prophets are the poets. 
It is the city of Athene — goddess of skill and wis- 
dom. All Hellenic art and story and worship 
and thought centered there. In what it was it 
stood and stands peerless, supreme. Beautiful 
for situation, and adorned beyond the rivalry of 
all later ages, of vast intellectual prestige, of a 
never-satisfied mental curiosity — it was the eye 
of Greece," and is the wonder of time. Schools, 
sybarites, strangers, slaves — and over all the 
breath of moral decay. Citizens and all comers 
alike were having leisure for nothing other than 
to tell or to hear some newer thing." The 
latest novelty was the most welcome — quid nunc? 

Great Aristotle and greater Plato were long 
dead, and less noble forms of thought now ruled 
this city of discussions. And this degeneracy of 
thought showed the incompetency of even the 
loftiest type of unheavened human reason to re- 
sist the sensualism that seeks its end in pleasures, 
and the fatalism whose pride of aspiration finds 
its conclusion in despair. 

What philosophy, as such, could do, had there 
been done. Idolatry had exhausted invention. 
Priests, sacrifices, shrines, festal days, were always 



THE UNKNOWN GOD 



75 



in evidence, but this capital of aesthetics was still 
hopelessly unsatisfied and restless — unhappy and 
impatient — -and ritual had lost its earnestness. 

" When love begins to sicken and decay 
It useth an enforced ceremony." 

Exquisite refinement of language, subtlety of 
dialectic, splendor of technique, memory of re- 
nown — all that made Athens the gossip of the 
world, had yet failed of that final peace without 
which conscience arrays man in a miserable 
quarrel with himself and all things. 

What has Paul to say to this Boston of Greece, 
and what has it to say to him ? See ! He moves 
about, inspecting, reflecting, and the city full of 
idols rouses him to a paroxysm." All this beauty 
and no hallowing knowledge of good. Variety 
itself a confession of spiritual uncertainty. Sim- 
pHcity nowhere. He must speak. And so in the 
little synagogue, and the great agora, or market 
place, he held daily dialogue with all comers. 
The omnipresent mistake gave him a constant 
text — the true God and eternal life. Everywhere 
he looked there was a shrine with its label. As 
one of their own satirists had said, " It was easier 
in Athens to find a god than to find a man.'' 

His protest is heard of; for never can be hid a 



76 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



resolute man with a true word! The philoso- 
phers encounter him to make the cause of Athens 
their own. They will, if they can, smother him 
with formulas, riddle him with categories, and 
silence him as absurd. 

Two theories of human life are there — self-suf- 
ficient, hostile, inconclusive — the pride of pleasure 
and the pleasure of pride. The Epicureans were 
the Greek Sadducees. Sinking below the level of 
him whose name they held, they had become frivo- 
lous, and reason for them was but a procuress. 
With them, though apparently so opposite, came 
certain of the Stoics, austere, cynical, churlish — at 
the best fatalists defying the inevitable. Without 
hope, both. As pithy Thomas Fuller (p. 223) puts 
it : The first standing for the anarchy of fortune, 
the second for the tyranny of fate.'' They began 
with a sneer and an epithet : " What would this 
babbler say?" — the bird that picked up seeds in 
the street cackling as he did so — a crow, He 
seems to be an announcer of alien gods." Strange 
indeed would his themes be to them. Yet, withal, 
his sincerity has an unusual flavor. So they have 
him to the Areopagus, or Hill of Mars, an open 
and lofty platform of Hmestone near by, where 
sat the court Solon had instituted for the trial 
of capital offenses, where, upon seats hewn from 



THE UNKNOWN GOD 



77 



the natural rock, the supreme judges held their 
venerable sessions. No violence is implied, though 
the place may have been chosen as carrying a 
suggestion of intimidation. 

But it fitted the man and his theme, as they 
ask him, with ironical courtesy, " May we know 
what this new teaching is?'* It was upon the 
charge of treasonable novelty of opinion that, 
long before, this Athens had sentenced Socrates. 
Socrates would have enjoyed this scene. Paul 
has permission. Enough. It is under that perfect 
sky, — about, the city with its lustrous architect- 
ures, — afar, the countless twinkling of the sea, — 
at hand, the chattering, curious company. But 
in him, now to speak, is a tremendous memory 
and a devoted hope whose passion no flouting 
can daunt. Men are his occasion, and however 
curt or critical their attention, all afforded mo- 
ments are his opportunity. There he stood in- 
trepid before rhetoricians and philosophers to 
tell them of life, and, if they would but hear, of 
Him who is the very wisdom of God. For who 
has so written His wisdom upon the mind and 
heart of men as that Jesus whom Paul preached ? 
What is any history of philosophy worth that 
forgets that Teacher of teachers — Christ ? 

Fragmentary as this sketch of Luke's must 



78 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



be, it shows Paul's masterful tact. Wisest and 
shrewdest of all known introductions. It is filled 
with local color and smoothes the way while it 
arrests attention. Direct, without bluntness, it 
shows the skill of one who could make the most 
of an opportunity. Paul is a Christian diplomat. 
It was notable wit — so Acts xxii. 1-3, xxiii. 6, 
xxiv. 10, xxvi, 12, xxviii. 17, 19. Remembering 
such instances, it is curious indeed that both the 
revisions of 161 1 and 1881 should fail to translate 
justly the w^ord with which Paul so keenly and 
truthfully characterized the Athenians. He did 
not tell them that they were " superstitious," but 
that they were " more than ordinarily religious." 
He is not so maladroit as to rebuff them at the 
outset, and lose his one possible advantage. 
Moreover, their altars and temples are a positive 
point in his argument. " Passing along and 
noting their objects of worship," particularly he 
had been impressed with one inscribed, " ^Ayi^coazaj 
dew " — what, therefore, they Muknowing worship, 
that will Paul declare to them. Two sentences 
and the ground is cleared for the theme. It is as 
clean and keen as a lancet. There is no finer 
instance of wise introduction in all the annals of 
speech. Paul had seen Athens soberly, as every 
true man must consider any great city — he ap- 



THE UNKNOWN GOD 



79 



predated its physical beauty and looked beyond 
this. Religious " — all men are that. It is the 
exceeding prerogative and function of man so to 
be. Something must be worshiped, image or 
reality. Paul, too, is a worshiper. H . knows 
of whom. 

The instinct is an immense avowal. Yet one 
may worship an unknown god and die amid the 
distractions of a miscellaneous idoldom. Thirst 
is not water, and craving is not knowledge. Paul 
would direct this appealing and appalHng hunger 
to a reasonable object. He would shed upon this 
confessed want the light of an unguessed love, 
and lead it to the shelter of an infinite promise. 
Not for naught in this city of idols and idlers 
had he specially considered the inscription which 
(note the courtesy of the pluperfect tense — not by 
those before him) had been written." 

In that epigraph, as in a mirror, idolatry must 
recognize at once its instinct and its failure. It 
confessed the vagueness and yet the desire — the 
hunger and the starvation. It was a vast and 
helpless interrogation. [Eder. on Proph., 42, 43.] 
Showing capacity for God, it showed also the 
incapacity of the errant and self-willed reason to 
reach Him ; for even in lofty Athens polytheism 
and pantheism was the result. That personal. 



8o 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



holy, merciful, redemptive One, it knew not. In 
this very sanctuary of intellect, of letters, and 
of art, man confessed that such a God was " far 
above, out of his sight." 

How Paul felt the pathos of it all, imagine. 
He would take that hand raised in the darkness, 
and clutching vainly " if haply it might find Him,'' 
and guide cynic and sophist to the One so near. 
He would answer the query and the quest — show 
the path they had missed, and erase the word 
Unknown." 

He does not refute, he interprets. Hebrew 
Scripture, in form, he does not once quote, for 
with them this has no authority ; rather he cites 
one of their own poets," and yet the spirit of 
the Psalms and of Isaiah is in all he says there. 
He adapts himself to their logic, and the so brief 
summary furnished us yet shows a most system- 
atic and broad argument. 

God the Maker of the Cosmos and its ruler — 
not confined (and here suppose the sweeping 
gesture toward the splendid structures all about) 
to shrines made by hands. First cause and final 
end of being ! Giver of all life — maintainer of it 
all ! His unity and so the unity of all men, who 
in Him move and ai'e. All races His offspring, 
and so brother-bound. Not the art and study " 



THE UNKNOWN GOD 



8i 



of man, but the heart is the answer. The creat- 
ure more than the things he fashions, — God more. 
Idolatry and its idea unworthy then of both the 
father and the child. God's likeness within. Der- 
ivation teaching dependence. The times of this 
" agnosticism " God overlooked. His forbearance 
with it. His present call to a " change of mind." 
The judgment of all the habitable earth by a 
Man whom He had appointed and the assurance 
thereof by His resurrection. 

Here on the Hill of Mars he cited Athens to 
face God. Swift, sure, fervid — he strode from 
premiss to conclusion. 

Hearing of a ''resurrection of dead men " some, 
thereupon, were jeering; some postponed; and 
Paul knew himself dismissed. Some stuck to him, 
one of them a judge of the court, one woman, by 
name Damaris, and others. So it was that day, so 
it is this day. All that Paul could he did. No 
church rose there; no letter to Athens is known. 
Pride of place, exclusiveness of race, conceit of 
knowledge, theory that denied the wisdom and 
the power of the God of life and Lord of death — 
whatever it was, they closed the testimony of that 
God whose community of relation to all men 
contains the community of all men's relation to 
Him ; whose providence clasps all the issues of 

6 



82 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



all hearts ; who leaves none groping in spiritual 
orphanage that is wilHng to recognize His pres- 
ence and do His will. Philosophers as they were, 
they did not love this deepest and simplest wis- 
dom. They went their ways and Paul went his. 
And still the altar stood — " to whom it may con- 
cern It stands yet, in a figure, for those who 
prefer it — 

" Tip ayvcoffTco deep 

Far Athens went, but not far enough. Gods 
many were hers, but not God! 

Certain things remain to reconsider. 

First, that all our theories of life tread out from 
our conception of God. He, the Maker, must be 
the first proposition of any intelligible creed. Any 
whole theory of the creation must hold it sub- 
ordinate to the Creator — center, circumference, 
and bond of all that is. Without Him all is 
absurd and unreal. He cannot be ignored — men 
have to choose an opinion concerning Him. "The 
thought of God (says another) spans the history 
of humanity as the rainbow hangs over the brink 
of the waterfall, always apparently about to be 
swept away by the impetuous waters, yet always 
there.'' He conditions our being and our thought. 
Living by Him and in Him we ought to live to 
Him; for we are His, And He is accessible — 



THE UNKNOWN GOD 



83 



"clearly seen by the creation^ What we read 
out He wrote in. It is not anonymous, but rather 
a great acrostic, which read up and down and 
not sidewise spells a name. That very shrine at 
Athens was a cryptogram of truth. 

And He, " in whose hand is the soul of every 
living thing, and the breath of all mankind,'' is a 
Redeemer. He has manifested Himself in a Man 
— borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows " — 
''brought life and immortahty to light.'' The 
cross is God's philosophy of sin and deliverance. 
He seeks the heart of the world with that light. 

An idol is at once an acknowledgment and a 
substitute. It depreciates both God and man. 
''The workman made it." Divinity and humanity 
together suffer. That which puts God nearest 
and loveHest lifts man furthest out of the rapacities 
of selfishness. Nothing or all. Then let us ask 
ourselves whether we live up to the Son of man 
as well as Athens lived up to her idolatries, and 
whether a mythology practiced is not better than 
a Christology only praised. 

Think of the proposition, an " unknown God !" 
And think of bending now at that altar! Yet 
modern credulity has enlarged upon that of Greece, 
and writes, to an unknowable God I — a God who 
cannot reveal Himself to His creature — a creature 



84 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



who cannot know! — both beHttled, Perception 
shorn of reflection indeed. How infinitely know- 
ing is this agnosticism ! How smooth the modesty 
of this large claim that God is unintelligible ! It is 
petulantly evasive — it is in the wish and the will. 
It ignores the question, "What think ye of 
Christ?" 

Its premiss is a priori — manufactured. It begs 
the very question. And it saws off the bough it 
sits on — for what is intelligence good for when it 
has committed parricide ? And why is its eager 
denial so reiterative, except that some reality urges 
it on ! It, with mock politeness, conducts God to 
the frontier. It does not like to retain Him in its 
knowledge.'^ Why ? Ask Athens ! What then ? 
Ask Athens ! Of what devotion is this ignorance 
the mother, — in the name of knowledge refusing 
its possibility ? 

Is it not time finally to repudiate the crass dog- 
matism, which first assumes and then asserts that 
preoccupation with the apparatus of creation is a 
sufficient reason to forget its origin and ends ? Is 
not that a deep astigmatism which dissects a bat's 
eye and abjures the imphcations of the mind that 
does it? Noble is intellectual curiosity toward 
all fact, but is not the thinker a fact? Is not 
the intuition of moral responsibility a fact ? Shall 



THE UNKNOWN GOD 



85 



one proclaim the unseen atom and lampoon the 
unseen God? The animus of that idolatry of 
mere objects, which/ while at every stage it must 
use subjectivity, — and personality evades its honest 
analysis, and which retires all the problems of 
the soul and its laws, — is an animus whose denials 
are explained by its dislikes. The agnostic is a 
kind of moral cretin ! Agnosticism preferred is a 
kind of idiocy, and at last is mental suicide ! 

Its Latin equivalent is ignoramus. It is not of 
the wit, but of the will. It shuts its eyes and then 
declares it cannot see. 

The X with which Paul factored was beyond 
the algebra of mere sense ; it was the sign of the 
cross. The soul's answer to the soul of its Maker 
was his major premiss, and led to the depths of 
wisdom and knowledge — God in Christ." 

And still the same foundational facts that he 
used are "to put to silence the agnosticism of 
irrational men.'* Creative intelligence, immanent 
and dominant personality, strenuous love — the 
gracious and holy One to whom we are akin. 
This is the bed-rock of theism and of Christianity. 

" Earth's crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God." 

Quibble, or quarrel, or accept Him — He is here ! 
No discovery of His ways can banish Him. Oaths 



86 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



and prayers, both, pronounce His name. The 
accent varies as we put Him into the crucible of a 
theory, or put ourselves in the crucible of prayer. 
Wordy Athens missed the central truth which by 
a wilHng surrender Paul had found. " We know 
Him whom we have believed " was his onward 
cry. Not at that end of the scalpel, but at this ! 

And we may know. Near He is. One wrote 
upon a blackboard, — " God is nowhere " : but a 
little child spelled it out, — " God is n-o-w h-e-r-e." 
A child's longing, a child's faith, a child's assur- 
ance and love, and that threshold is passed at 
whose lowly lintel a self-willed philosophy bumps 
its proud head ! I, for my part, will stick to Paul, 
all Athenianism to the contrary notwithstanding. 
I erase the word ayvoiOTwr I " know in part ; 
but I shall know even as I have been known." 



VII 

THE SANCTIONS OF LAW 



VII 



THE SANCTIONS OF LAW 

" Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men/' 
— 2 Cor. v. II. 

In the face of that punishment of the slayer of 
President McKinley, let me undertake to make 
" manifest in your consciences " some of the pro- 
found reasons that underlie what we call the sanc- 
tions of the law. A sanction is that which binds 
law by administration. It declares and assures 
that the authority to command goes with the 
purpose and the power to execute the results of 
obedience and of disobedience. Legislation shorn 
of executive ability is nullified and discredited. 
Law is not in the subjunctive but in the imperative 
mood. Authority is not a " bureau of advice/' 
but a right and a purpose to control. It declares 
a method of administration. It formulates obliga- 
tion. It bases upon a right. It certifies a purpose. 
It implies power. It reveals consequences. 

These consequences are sanctions. Its conse- 
quences, whether of pain or of peace, make good 

89 



90 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



its declarations and magnify its intention. They 
refer to the authority as actual, potential, consist- 
ent, and complete. The purpose of law is to 
secure right action — harmony with its authority — 
life, order, blessing ; and this purpose is so real 
and vital that it will not tolerate trifling, and that 
it will visit with adverse severity those who offend 
its spirit and behests. A good law — a good 
government — has its security in approving and 
securing good men, and this it does in demon- 
strating by active results that it intends to secure 
them from the caprice or malice of those who are 
contentious and will not obey its truth. If it did 
not promise and perform both sets of results it 
would be a failure. 

Power to uphold must therefore go with au- 
thority to declare, if there is to be a real govern- 
ment. Offenders must suffer the due consequences 
of their offense. This is the only possible way if 
the law is to be respected. Results are necessary 
corollaries, and they bind (or sanction) the law. 
The fact of right or wrong relation to the authority 
dictates the appropriate consequences. These are 
implicit in the command. They are notified as 
showing that the issues are vital. A true as 
opposed to a careless administration of law must 
become therefore a terror to evil doers and a 



THE SANCTIONS OF LAW 



praise to them that do well. The doing regulates 
the allotment. 

A false administration, neglecting or inverting 
this, is shown in the barter of law, in the surrender 
of its sanctions, in the subversion of its own claim 
to administer, and becomes a praise to evil doers 
and a terror to them that do well ! It institutes a 
ring." It misgoverns. It prostitutes justice. It 
prostrates all guarantees of right liberty. The 
sanctions are thus the judgment which is passed 
upon the given government — be it of a city, or of 
a people, as right or as wrong. 

Some sanctions are inevitable. Tyranny has its 
own. Anarchy has its own. Righteousness has 
its own. For better or worse they are. Good or 
bad, they are stringent. They are locked in the 
reasonable relation between consequence and 
cause. Were it not so, all the forces in which we 
are set were irrational. Because " madness lies 
that way," sanity lies the other way. 

To know "the fear of the Lord "is to know 
that His wisdom and will and power are pledged 
together to the maintenance of His actual au- 
thority. The world that is, is a world where 
creation and creature are bound in law and right 
to their Creator. His control is the condition of 
the satisfaction of the life He begat, and of the 



92 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



realm He made for its loyal exercise. The sanc- 
tions of His laws for things and for souls are 
everywhere shown. Whatever authority He dele- 
gates has these behind it. All right rule conforms 
so far to His, and the rationality and justice of it, 
in any case, is illuminated by the issuing results 
that make it binding. 

The law of love, as the law of gravity, has its 
logical penalties and reward. All control implies 
the consequences of order and of disorder. It is 
this reasonable sequence that makes the physical 
world intelligible and makes the science thereof 
possible. If law were incoherent (that is, without 
coherent effects) we could not know. Organized 
knowledge implies an organized world. All per- 
sonal knowledge asserts a personal supreme Ruler. 
A universe without that were a chaos. That we 
can reason asserts God and His consistency. The 
continuity of any law of God involves a principle 
that is as real and as regnant in morals as in 
physics. Our observations and our instincts, 
therefore, coincide in expecting certain events to 
follow certain relations. But these expectations 
reaHzed are the manifest sanctions of the law. 
They declare its persistency and its inviolability. 
Those who run against it confirm it. 

Moral responsibility is structural in this world 



THE SANCTIONS OF LAW 



of God. Justice is a reality. Particular justice 
here is based upon the powers of the world to 
come." The scale extends far, far, beyond any 
present instances, and sinks into a thoughtful 
apprehension stern premonitions of changeless 
principles. Through all opaque tradition and 
confused sentiment it darts prophetic rays of an 
eternal and infrangible authority, under which we 
have our being and before whose vindications we 
must stand. 

Equal law, whose pedestal is reared above the 
tyranny which usurps true authority and the law- 
lessness which denies it, stands in those intuitions 
of divine control which ahke rebuke Ishmael and 
Cain. 

Beast rule — denying all wrong because denying 
all right, all the havoc of passion and will-violence 
that would aboHsh the responsibility it hates, that 
would sin and not suffer, that resents those sanc- 
tions which confirm the law — is met even in human 
courts by that conscience of mankind which 
reflects a God of rectitude, who would not be 
worthy if He were neutral toward disobedience. 
Were His will weak and vacillating, were not His 
resources pledged to the life that is life indeed, 
and pledged against the life that is death — did He 
not magnify and make honorable the law, then 



94 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



were there no barriers against a revolutionized 
universe. 

The instinct which connects penalty with per- 
versity — the capacity of moral indignation before 
flagrant injustice, the public determination to visit 
offenders against even earth's rational order — these 
show a part of God's ways, and catch the rustle of 
His skirts. To apologize for the strictness of right- 
eousness is to <^^-moralize and <3^^-rationalize all 
human relation. Purpose to enforce is the king- 
bolt of all law, and of that purpose the sanction, 
in whatever degree, is the object lesson. Reward 
and punishment are exemplary. The ends of 
punishment may include chastisement and reclama- 
tion, but they include far more. Penalty may be 
detersive as to the individual, but it must be deter- 
rent as to others. It considers pubHc and general 
influence — it is meant to make contempt of court 
impossible — it is meant to show that justice is for 
the just by showing that it is against the unjust. 
It reveals what the true Hfe is by showing what it 
cannot be. 

No punishment is an equivalent for the offense ; 
it cannot square the books ; it is not merely an 
exacted fine ; it cannot be expiation. Therefore it 
is not vindictive (that is, revengeful — a trying to 
" get even," pain for pain), but it is vmdicative. 



THE SANCTIONS OF LAW 



95 



Torture is malicious and malice is not justice. 
Justice is not arbitrary, but explanatory of the 
tendency and issue of evil. It warns from death 
that it may impart life. It inflicts that it may 
prevent. It must visit obduracy or it would not 
be justice. So it was a Saviour who warned from 
the danger of eternal sin." The strong delu- 
sion" which resents control and disdains obedience 
and scoffs at penalty is a cause, but it is first a 
result. " The transgression of the wicked uttereth 
its oracle within his heart " (Psa. xxxvi. \,2, R. V,, 
margin), and the result of its determined persist- 
ency is banishment from the probation it scorns. 
Effrontery toward a holy God— and the wholeness 
of the conditions of life — should fail; bravado 
should have its impotence to thwart right solemnly 
affirmed. The He of atheism and its anarchy 
should " gnaw its own tongue !" He who created 
us moral beings- — with reason to see and wills to 
choose — must treat us both in retribution and 
reward under the terms of our moral nature, 
else a mutable authority and all woe to every one 
involved, as every one would be, in the wreckage 
of God. 

For God to make known the tendency of law- 
lessness is mercy. Law is not a trap. The label 
of " poison is an admonition to let it alone. If 



96 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



it did not kill those who abuse it, the label were 
a lie. If it does kill, it is kindness to have it 
known. And there is that kills. If life w^ere not 
an alternative, it were but mechanical. Law in- 
volves conditions. Motion itself is conditioned 
by resistances. Law declares purpose, that certain 
forces shall act so and so, and their action and 
reaction are equal. A world of motion must 
either be a world of law or a world of confusion. 
The sanctions signify that law is regular because 
they provide for the compensation of emergencies. 
Construction is adaptation to condition. The 
rails declare the nature of the locomotive. Rules 
regulate life that it may learn and keep the con- 
ditions proper to it. He who created declares 
whereunto and wherein. This declaration, how- 
ever ascertained, is law. Law, then, is not tenta- 
tive nor subjunctive, but indicative and imperative. 
Sanctions are a necessary part of its reality. 
Without these it could not be. They are — both 
in reason and in fact. Back of what is, we can- 
not go. In that which is, we think and are. 

This is fundamental to every exercise of intelli- 
gence and will. To theorize without fact is to 
attempt a mental vacuum. It is both unscientific 
and immoral ; for that it refuses to know in order 
that it may refuse to do. We cannot go behind 



THE SANCTIONS OF LAW 97 



that law of being which being exhibits. The 
Creator is demonstrated in that kind of a creation 
in which, by Him, we, the creatures, are set. 

Strangely enough, and in utter inconsistency 
with every postulate of their hedonism (the doc- 
trine that pleasure is the final end), John Stuart 
Mill and his father both objected that Christianity 
is immoral because it sets forth a background of 
penalty and reward. But there the background 
is even upon the present scale — all criminal juris- 
prudence recognizes it. Christ did not come to 
change the natural law of transgression, but to 
change the attitude and relation to it of a culprit, 
but not irrecoverable, race. The gospel is not an 
evasion of law, but honors it while it shows how 
God may be just and yet forgive. It declares the 
law of the spirit of a new life which begins in 
the confession of judgment, which pleads guilty, 
and which, under the wonderful conditions of a 
mercy, accepted as sticky turns back toward the 
righteous Will sin had refused to its undoing. It 
answers the desperate cry of the suffocating heart, 
" how can man be Just with God ?" A gospel 
that surrendered law would be the good news 
that God had abdicated ! — what were such a gos- 
pel worth ? Who would administer it? It were 
a Robespierre Republic ! 
7 



98 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



No. The function of a supreme and righteous 
authority is to show its righteousness to be su- 
preme, and " submission to the righteousness of 
God" recognizes and adores that justice which is 
not a means but an end, and to God's will it utters 
its total Amen ! 

We study the sanctions of the law most readily 
by observing penalty. It is obvious and general. 
There are a thousand diseases ; there is but one 
kind of health. Blessedness is the reward. It 
is the absence of penalty and its occasion. To 
secure this, penalty rebukes that which thwarts 
it. Life is the avoidance of all that is deadly. 
Health is the answer to the absence of all that 
makes sick. Pathology is in order to cure. The 
absence of all negations fulfills the positive pur- 
pose. Therefore w^e have and study these ahen 
symptoms. We mind true things by what their 
mockeries be!' 

Truly, to fear penalty for its own sake is not 
goodness. Avowedly its law is for offenders. 
Its intent is to signify that law is to be kept, not 
broken. It is, in whatever degree, admonitory — 
" lest a worse thing befall," but it is admonitory 
because it is stringently in earnest. The first 
symptoms have all the incidental values of intimi- 
dation — they say ''go back'' — the last results are 



THE SANCTIONS OF LAW 



fatal and vindicate the law — of use and help only 
toward others who heed and pause. All is fore- 
warned that all the bearings may be understood. 
Therefore said Paul, Knowing the terrors of 
law, we persuade." Terror is not persuasion, 
but it prompts to it. God is not mocked ; there- 
fore mock him not ! " Because there is wrath — 
beware 

By every quicksand there is a sign, — at every 
critical point a signal, — before every trespass a 
fence. Those only are angry at this who mean 
to take the chances. When God does not neglect, 
be sure He does not exaggerate. 

Penalty alone is not recuperative, but points 
inward to the need of recuperation. It is intro- 
ductory — preliminary. It points away from itself 
to far deeper and higher considerations. It desig- 
nates evil and urges that the fear of the Lord is 
to hate " that. The way of the transgressor is 
made hard that so he may quit transgression. He 
is made to fear the bad that he may have its un- 
reasonableness shown, and may have his ears 
opened to discipline ; so he can come to see 
further, and to distinguish mere legal fear from 
godly sorrow for the wrong. The fitness of law 
thus appeals to the inner and moral sanctions. 
The case is carried up into the court of con- 

LofC. 



lOO 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



science. The terrors of the Lord, against whom 
all sin is, lift him above the mere questions of 
advantage. He seeks not escape, but remedy; 
not mere remission of pain, but forgiveness of sin. 
He sees that penalty has been benign — in leading 
through, and out of, legal fear. The inwardness 
of evil appears. He fronts Duty, and can see 
the bewildering beauty of the love that provides 
a righteous amnesty. Nothing artificial can equal 
that. Before its sunlight even the electric pencils 
cast a shadow. There is forgiveness with God 
that he should be feared." They are but prac- 
tical fatalists who trifle with mercy by evading 
the obedience to which mercy means to reclaim. 
That is not a salvation which does not save from 
sin. The persuasions of God are in order that 
we may see the sacredness of life as bound up in 
Him. Goodness is not of necessity but of free 
will.'' Probation discloses sufficient hght to cer- 
tify sin's wages, but not enough to stun and sear. 
Fear of results leads back to the vision of the 
false relation which invokes them. It awakens 
and summons, it arrests and indicts, but its ends 
are fulfilled only in a changed mind and a contrite 
heart. Pardon is given only to those who ask it 
as their sole resource, and who ask it that they 
may become clean and true. Love to a holy 



THE SANCTIONS OF LAW loi 



God is the only fulfillment of that law which the 
gospel emphasizes and meets, not evades. Oh, 
may we all meet this persuasion with surrender, 
and, held fast in the arms of mercy, be able to 
say with penitent and devoted, and so with as- 
sured hearts: " Enter not into judgment with thy 
servant ! " 



VIII 

THE INVISIBLE COMPANION 



VIII 



THE INVISIBLE COMPANION 
''It is expedient for you that I go away.'* — John xvi. 7. 

The anticipation of the Ascension, and the pre- 
lude of Christ's further and ever-crescent revelation 
of God ! 

His eleven intimate friends knew that a catas- 
trophe was nearing them. What it was to be 
they could not tell, but they felt its chilling breath, 
and they perceived that it menaced that society 
with Him which had become so vital and so 
precious. 

Sorrow filled their hearts, and as frightened 
children clutch a mother's skirts, so with a painful 
instinct they held that Friend and Teacher whose 
presence and love had grown to be their whole 
life. They were troubled too deeply to reason 
well upon the purpose and way of His going ; 
they only longed not to lose Him, and clung to 
Him with a suffocating premonition. 

Not directly does He chide their distress, but 
He corrects its degree, and would soothe the sore 

105 



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THE WELL BY THE GATE 



hearts whose anxious grief is His grief also. 
Never does He censure the tears that bhnd affec- 
tionate eyes, but wipes them from all faces with 
His own soft hand. 

When can He better than now assure them that 
He will not bereave them, — that His departure 
will not leave them orphans," — that, in the 
person of another Helper, who shall more and 
more show them of Himself, He will come to 
them to abide with them for ever." This soon, 
and that by and by He their Lord will return to 
receive them again, and to part from them no 
more. 

These things He had not told them earlier ; for 
it was not needful while He still was with them, 
but now He plants in their hearts a great hope, 
preparing them to recognize and welcome the 
Holy Ghost as His personal and continued pres- 
ence. The Paraclete is Christ's perdurable life. 

One more token here that the fondest and 
firmest promises are made in the hours of intensest 
need, — in wrecked Eden that earliest gospel of the 
seed of the woman that should crush the serpent's 
head, — before impending Calvar}^ this pledge, 
Lo, I am with you alwa}'." Ever}^ keen pang 
of love that suffers and trusts is big with revela- 
tion — its travail contains an overwhelming joy. 



THE INVISIBLE COMPANION 



The consolations of God bestow new interpreta- 
tions of His nature and of its nearness, and arouse 
an expectancy which shall be fulfilled. And when 
all else is dark, to cite this constancy of God is 
the best that human lips can minister to human 
distress. 

So their Friend (and He is ours) declares to 
them that though their misery is natural, it is 
unnecessary. They must have confidence in Hhn^ 
— If it were not so, I would have told you " ! 
And to that confidence in His absolute knowledge 
and fidelity — His personal trustworthiness (and 
this is the very quintessence and marrow of 
faith — not opinion, or mental conclusion, but 
the intuition of a person) — to this confidence He 
appeals, with a reason so deep that they shall 
always ponder it and wonder, as we, too, wonder 
at its wealth : It is expedient for you that I go 
away." " Nevertheless " — always the more ! In- 
comprehensible : yet strange as it seems He 
pledges His truthfulness that His apparent going 
is to be His coming nearer to them than ever ! 
His plan, and right, and glory is also to be their 
great gain. 

They are to accept this now because He says 
so, — later they are to realize it. They are to 
enter upon a new era and a riper experience of 



io8 THE WELL BY THE GATE 

God. Their fellowship so far is introductory to a 
richer bestowal of His nature and a more abun- 
dant manifestation of His life. As, far into that 
last night, their Friend talked on with them, He 
told them more than all else He had told them ; 
but He is, by that imparted Guest for whose 
welcome he makes ready, to tell them more yet — 
to enlighten their remembrance and ever to inten- 
sify their hopes. Their Teacher is to draw them 
to loftier vision and to closer intimacy. All they 
had received and learned so far is but prelude. 
Power lay in the promise : " Greater things than 
these shall he do ; because I go unto the Father." 
" If I go not away, the Paraclete will not come." 
Thus does Christ affirm Himself the connection 
between the outmost and the inmost, the God 
above and God within the soul, and lays His hand 
upon both. 

God shows His love, both in the course of time 
and in the progress of each recovered heart, in 
three consecutive and completing manifestations. 
They are climactic : Creation, Incarnation, Inspira- 
tion. The universe about and above, the animate 
body with and before us, the deep soul within, — 
these are His vessels of revelation, affirming His 
power, His personality, and His unseen presence. 
Reason, sense, and intuition answer Him, — Maker, 



THE INVISIBLE COMPANION 109 



Kinsman, and Companion, — and in all, the Lord 
and Lover. 

That is most which is inmost, including and 
crowning all else and leading reflection through 
feeling into direct vital certainty. This is the 
order of our apprehension of God, the objective 
evidence leading on and into the subjective. And 
the strongest is latest in order. Taking ourselves 
with us at every step, and led by Him who is the 
beginning and the end, we climb the stairway of 
experience and fact up to the primary conviction 
that " in Him we live " — began to live and live 
now. First we infer, next we perceive, last we 
know. 

And it was unto the fiUing of this highest 
knowledge — essence to essence, spirit to spirit — 
that Christ went away. Sight was to be surpassed 
by insight. The sentient soul was to transcend 
the senses. 

So Paul said even though we have known 
Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so 
no more " ; for He who once dwelt with His dis- 
ciples now dwells in them. The Lord is that 
Spirit " — inhabiting the soul He saves. To real- 
ize this dispenses with all sentimental longing for 
His form. How the emotions of the world would 
stir were it proclaimed that the Son of God were 



no THE WELL BY THE GATE 

again in the flesh, working again as He wrought 
at Capernaum and Bethany, talking to this gray 
and haggard age as He talked in those first years 
of the era He created ! How it would sift the 
hearts of men ! But that such an excitement 
would thrill the nations and create an international 
crisis would be, first, because He is here now and 
has been always, and second, because so many do 
not know it or have forgotten ! 

He showed Himself then, long ago, because His 
power was to remain. He taught His apostles 
more after His ascension than they had conceived 
before. There is no fading out and anticlimax in 
the written word. He presides in it all. The 
Old Testament is to be reread in the light of the 
New, and the great epistles have the mind of 
Christ " not merely in comment but in amplifica- 
tion. They deepen, protract, and fulfill the narra- 
tive of the Evangels. Peter and John and Paul 
unfold the meanings — so universal and age-long — 
of redemption with a ken and grasp which only 
progress under its central Person could have 
given them. He taught them to the last, and 
questions and implications which the gospel raised 
their after-record answers. Nay, after them and 
ever since, in a sequence and enlargement that 
knows no break or period, the company of 



THE INVISIBLE COMPANION 



1 1 1 



those who by the Spirit call Jesus Lord, is the 
integral proof of His unintermittent and for ever 
culminating power. The Viewless One is the 
constantly executive Saviour of the world. This 
secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him and 
He will show them His covenant. 

Now surely we can see some of the eminent 
blessings which were established by the with- 
drawal of Christ from sight and all external sense. 
They are for us also. First, it deepened the appre- 
hension of His real nature and effect. The open 
vision gave confidence in God an immensely defi- 
nite basis, but this was also the foundation upon 
which fidelity was yet to enlarge. It was not a 
conclusion, but the beginning of a wider knowl- 
edge of the real God ever immanent in the life of 
the world. The corner stone was set fast, but the 
temple was to rise. The King was come that the 
kingdom of His truth might prove His reign and 
endless increase of government. 

Principle was to surpass rule, and companion- 
ships of soul supersede physical proximity; for 
intuition is more than inspection, and the local is 
swallowed up of the universal. Much as these 
disciples desired His continued tangible form and 
His audible word, they were to learn Him better 
by His apparent absence, following Him rather 



112 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



than their sight of Him, and finding omnipresence 
more than ubiquity. 

The experience which is not merely objective, 
nor even rational alone, but moral, is the highest 
discipline and the most direct and consummate 
assurance. The strongest evidence is in the 
spirit — this candle Christ lights — and so, how- 
ever impossible seemed this announcement, they 
were to comprehend more of their Lord and of His 
resources and intention by that which then seemed 
(only seemed) to throw them upon themselves. 

Further, they were to profit in proving the 
superiority of general over special manifestations. 
The phenomenal is everywhere the limited and 
the transitory, the invisible endures and creates 
new incarnations. The " law of the Spirit of 
life " transcends the particular effect and in- 
stance. Biology lies back of morphology. The 
spiritual force is the fact, and the given form is 
but its incident. 

We realize by our departures. The boy never 
knows how much and whereunto his mother did 
for him until he is gone from home. The won- 
derful deed fills and dazzles the horizon, — after- 
wards its meaning, its implication toward and 
interpretation of the accustomed, translates it, 
while it reillumines what for a little while it hid. 



THE INVISIBLE COMPANION 113 

The call or whisper of God in the soul is the 
generic and normal thing. Spirit itself beareth 
witness with our spirit. The silent communion 
is the closest and the surest. And this constant 
utterance within to those who seek the Presence 
in their hearts is the permanent truth which Christ 
came to teach, and went away that He might 
teach it the more. Herein at least the Quakers 
have borne a pregnant testimony. The general is 
more than the special, and they misunderstand 
and neglect God who now would turn back to 
demand a sign. The vacuity of " spiritism " is 
that it reverts to the senses and foregoes spiritu- 
ality. At the best it doubts the Holy Ghost, and 
so is ''by its means defeated of its ends." It sub- 
stitutes curiosity for communion. 

Moreover, Christ's departure devolved upon 
His disciples larger responsibilities. They were 
to learn initiative and resolution. Always so. 
Ability grows thereby and certainty. A father 
teaches his child the moves of chess, and then, 
though seeing how many plays might be bettered, 
he is silent and watches, so that the child may 
learn the game even by losing games. Coaching 
is provisional. It does its work by making ready 
to retire. Our best books are those we have 
mastered. A college is in order that its students 
8 



114 THE WELL BY THE GATE 



may cease to be undergraduates. It is applied 
that it may educe the after man. There is no 
influence that we appreciate while we are absorb- 
ing it, but only when it proves itself by flowing 
from us. Its reflex is its fulfillment. 

Christ's going was the promotion of those men 
of His, thereafter to do what He had done. 
Pupils are to become teachers — disciples to be 
apostles. They are to reveal His life in their 
mortal bodies. A world is put upon their hands, 
while they and it still are on His heart. They 
have a testimony to give, nourished all the while 
in their souls by Him who commissions them. 

How wonderfully and how fast the}' grew! 
The Peter of that night could shame all that 
external knowledge had done for him, but not 
after Pentecost. The Unseen was to rouse a 
deeper faith than sight had ever conferred. And 
to the last — a new beatitude, Blessed are they 
that have not seen and yet have believed." He 
who was there, is here ! 

How evidently Christ, who knew when to come, 
knew when to go ! The work of incarnation was 
done, inspiration was established once for all. 
Their Lord's fidelity challenges theirs, as His 
representatives. Reasserting the permanent prox- 
imity of God, the task was finished. 



THE INVISIBLE COMPANION 



All work is best done by making it ready to 
transfer, by putting into it a spirit that shall sur- 
vive one's physical presence and that shall inspire 
others to maintain and advance it. He imparted 
what could not but endure. Christ's legacy was 
His changed but deepened companionship. Had 
He lived on in Galilee, to be known only as He 
might be seen, all the millions of men who know 
Him now had been the losers. 

His more expedient " way is His way toward 
and for us. Perhaps you think that to see Him 
with your mortal eyes would make you sure, and 
that His visible lips would answer your com- 
plex questions, His palpable hands lighten so 
many burdens ; but the immortal eyes are surer, 
the inner voice more intimate, the help more 
immediate. He chose for those disciples the 
wider, fuller, completer manifestation, giving not 
as the world gives, and His Good-by was not a 
parting after all. He is not gone! 

We whisper that child's hymn : — 

I wish that His hands had been laid on my head, 
That His arms had been thrown around me, 
And that I might have seen His kind looks," 

but Abide with me " is a nobler aspiration. 

Meeting Him now in the daily inmost life, all 



ii6 



THE WELL BY THE GATE 



things but hasten the day wherein we shall have 
that whose postponement is our best probation. 
''A Httle while " and you shall see Him as He is, 
then also to add your rapturous Amen to that 
which, when it was given, was so inconceivably 
great a promise, and to say and fully know — It 
was expedient that He went away." 



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